Wild Country

Chapter Forty-Four

Leakey's little clinic had seen many a gunshot wound. "I'm sorry," said the sad-faced little doctor, removing old-fashioned glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Maybe if I'd got to him a little earlier…" He waved a hand and let it fall. "From the angle I'd say the bullet nicked his heart. I'll know more, ah, later. Your friend simply bled to death internally, Mr. Coulter. I'll have to have a statement, of course."

The young man with the blood-caked shirt sighed. While still in his teens, Quantrill had learned the trick of divorcing himself from the dead, no matter how dear. The more you mourned, the less you were able to avenge. "You still go by the book out here, huh?"

The little doctor elevated his chin. "This country won't be wild forever," he said stolidly. He could not have known that he was endorsing Quantrill's goals.

Quantrill stared over the man's green-smocked shoulder at the body of Cameron Concannon, naked to the waist and grayish against cold, impersonal sheets. The wound had bled so little outside that Quantrill had maintained an irrational hope. "Right. But right now I need a VHP set." He saw what he took for a negative look as the doctor opened his mouth. "It may be life or death."

The doctor shrugged and led him to the front desk, where a grandmotherly woman sat dozing. Moments later, Quantrill had Mulvihill Garner's call code from the Del Rio exchange.

The old rancher did not answer for so long that Quantrill was already imagining him dead. When he did answer, Quantrill identified himself as Sam Coulter and said, straight off, that he bore the worst kind of news.

"Seems to be your specialty." Mul Garner yawned. "Put Cam on."

"I can't," Quantrill replied, and told him why. He ended the account with, "You may need some help there, Mr. Garner. Are you speaking freely?"

"Nobody in the house but me. And don't worry about me. I'll take care of my own. Always have."

"Concannon told me to say" — he paused, glancing at the physician—"that the man I fought has a big pile of hard money stashed away. He implied it was from illegal dealings." Quantrill repeated the location as the foreman had gasped it out to him. "I don't know if that means anything to you."

"Yes, but mostly it means it's dirty money, so it's not Jerome's and it's not mine. It's nobody's." Mul Garner's voice in the earpiece was old now. "I've lost my best friend, and I guess I've lost my son. You have anything else to keep me awake with?"

Quantrill denied it. He was in the act of apologizing when Mul Garner killed the connection.

He was turning away from the radiophone when he made a mental connection and wheeled back, punching a code he knew by heart, feeling icy tentacles constrict around his chest. He relaxed when Sandy Grange answered.

He told her there had been a shooting scrape without giving details. "No, I'm fine… well, as good as you could expect," he amended, seeing the doctor's eyebrows rise. There was no telling what the physician might make of the conversation, and he took no chances. "I had a minor accident or two while looking for our livestock." Pause. "I'm really okay, honey, will you shut the hell up and listen? Okay, you recall that neighbor of yours who used to try shaking me up at Saturday dances. Yeah, him; and his friends, too. Somebody told me today to watch my back. I figure you two may be the only unprotected back I have, so stay healthy 'til I get there."

A longer pause, and the doctor saw the young man's face split in a grin. He would never have guessed that young man had just been told that a wandering Russian boar had come ambling home. Ba'al had a deep cut in his underlip, but blue ointment was Sandy's sovereign remedy. He was near the soddy, so if she needed any help, she could whistle it up in seconds. Childe, she said, reported that Ba'al actually looked forward to his next encounter with the English lieutenant.

Quantrill: "The hell of it is, so does Wardrop." Pause, then a lopsided smile. "What can I do? If they're gonna fight like this, why don't they just get married?"

Her reply was unprintable. Quantrill put down the headset still smiling guiltily, then followed the physician to give Sam Coulter's version of the night's violence. At least half of his statement was true.